Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus "Caligula", Emperor, 37-41, born probably at the Julio-Claudian
resort of Antium (now Anzio, Italy), the youngest son of the Roman general
Germanicus Caesar and the grandnephew of the Roman emperor Tiberius.

All classical accounts of Gaius agree that
he possessed elements of madness, cruelty, viciousness, extravagance and
megalomania. He is described as a coarse and cruel despot with an extraordinary
passion for sadism and a fierce energy. He could get extremely excited
and angry. Caligula was tall, spindly, pale and prematurely bald. He was
so sensitive about his lack of hair that it was a capital crime for anyone
to look down from a high place as Caligula passed by. Sometimes he ordered
those with a fine head of hair to be shaved. He made up for lack of hair
on his head by an abundance of body-hair. About this too he could be equally
sensitive; even the mention of "hairy goats" in conversation was dangerous.
He used to grimace, which he practiced in front of a mirror, and he was
an impressive orator. An interesting detail is that his real nature was
only gradually revealed. His great-uncle, the emperor Tiberius (42 BC -37
AD), once said: "There was never a better slave nor a worse master than
Caligula."

From the emperor Augustus he inherited
ambition and sensuality as well as the family affliction epilepsy. He was
caught in bed with his sister Drusilla before he came of age. His famous
father Germanicus (15 BC - 19 AD), his mother Agrippina the elder (14 BC-33
AD) and all his brothers were either killed or starved to death by order
of the suspicious emperor Tiberius and his ambitious Praetorian Prefect,
Sejanus. During his adolescence, Caligula was a virtual prisoner of Tiberius.
By then Tiberius had largely withdrawn from active government and retreated
to the island of Capri, where Caligula kept him company and tried to play
the part of a dutiful and upright young man. However, he could not fool
Tiberius, who described him as a 'serpent'. Capri was ideally situated
as a fortress and a refuge where Tiberius was free from fears of conspiracy
and assassination. According to the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius,
at Capri Tiberius felt at liberty to indulge in all kinds of prolonged
tortures and sexual perversities until he fell ill in March AD 37 and subsequently
collapsed into a coma. The court officials thought he had died and began
to congratulate Caligula on his accession, when Tiberius awoke. It is said
that the Emperor was smothered with his bedclothes by Caligula's chamberlain,
Macro. Thus Caligula came to power.

In the first months Caligula's reign was
mild and his policies showed some political judgement. Even then, Caligula
took much pleasure in attending punishments and executions and he preferred
to have them prolonged. In May his grandmother Antonia, who might have
been a good influence, died. In October Caligula fell seriously ill, and
after his recovering Caligula seems to have changed for the worse. In a
few months he entirely exhausted the treasury, which Tiberius had filled
by years of economizing. In 38, while having an affair with Macro's wife,
he accused Macro of being her pimp and ordered him to commit suicide. Tiberius'
grandson and heir, Tiberius Gemellus, once drank a cough medicine that
Caligula mistook for an antidote to poison. When accused, the youth replied:
"Antidote - how can one take an antidote against Caesar?" Soon afterwards
Tiberius Gemellus was murdered. It became a capital crime not to bequeath
the Emperor everything. In 39 Caligula revived Tiberius' treason trials.
People suspected of disloyalty were executed or driven to suicide. A supervisor
of games and beast-fights was flogged with chains before Caligula for days
on end, and was not put to death until Caligula was offended by the smell
of the gangrene in his brain. On one occasion, when there weren't enough
condemned criminals to fight the tigers and lions in the arena, Caligula
ordered some spectators to be dragged from the benches into the arena.
Another time, Caligula decided to proclaim his mastery of the sea by building
a three mile long bridge of boats across the Bay of Naples. He crossed
them on horseback, wearing the breastplate of Alexander the Great. Thus
he claimed that, like the god Neptune, he had ridden across the waters.
He gave his horse, Incitatus, jeweled necklaces, a marble stable with furniture
and a staff of servants to itself and made it a priest of his temple and
even proposed to make it a senator.

Caligula loved dressing up and used to
dress in rich silk, ornamented with precious stones and he wore jewels
on his shoes. Pearls were dissolved in vinegar, which he then drank, and
he liked to roll on heaps of gold. Like his nephew, Nero (37 AD-68 AD),
Caligula appeared as athlete, charioteer, singer and dancer. To increase
his revenues Caligula introduced all possible forms of taxation and rich
people who had involuntary willed him their estates were murdered. Once,
when a supposedly rich man had finally died, but turned out to have left
no money, Caligula commented: "Oh dear, he died in vain." Caligula even
opened a brothel in his palace where Roman matrons, their daughters and
freeborn youths could be hired for money.

Caligula was irresistibly attracted by
every pretty young woman whom he did not possess. He even committed incest
with his own three sisters. He would carefully examine women of rank in
Rome and whenever he felt so inclined, he would send for whoever pleased
him best. He debauched them and left them like fruit he had tasted and
thrown away. Afterwards, he would openly discuss his bedfellow in detail.
His first wife, Julia Claudilla, died young. In the first year of his reign
Caligula attended a wedding and ran off with the bride, Livia Orestilla,
whom he divorced after a few days. He soon tired of his rich third wife,
Lollia Paulina, too. He made the older Milonia Caesonia (±5-41)
his fourth wife in 38, when she was already pregnant. The sensual and immoral
Caesonia was an excellent match for him. Caesonia gave birth to a daughter,
Julia Drusilla, whom Caligula considered his own child, because "she was
so savage even in childhood that she used to attack with her nails the
faces and eyes of the children who played with her". Whenever Caligula
kissed the neck of his wife or mistress, he used to say: "This lovely neck
will be chopped as soon as I say so". In addition, Caligula had sexual
relations with men like the pantomime actor Mnester, Valerius Catullus
and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Lepidus was married to Caligula's favorite
sister Drusilla and also engaged in affairs with Caligula's other sisters.
Meanwhile, Caligula forced Drusilla to live with him as his wife, following
the practice of the Egyptian pharaohs. It was said that when Drusilla became
pregnant, Caligula couldn't wait for the birth of their god-like child
and disemboweled her to pluck the unborn baby from her womb. True or not,
Drusilla died and Caligula had her deified. The next year Caligula had
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus murdered. In addition, he had his sisters Livilla
and Agrippina the younger, Nero's mother, exiled to an island and confiscated
their possessions.

Caligula demanded that he be worshiped
as a god. Caligula's self-indulgence in his supposed divinity deteriorated
his insane behavior. He was convinced that he was entitled to behave like
a god. Thus, he set up a special temple with a life-sized statue of himself
in gold, which was dressed each day in clothing such as he wore himself.
As a sun god he courted the moon. He claimed fellowship with the gods as
his equals, identifying himself in particular with Jupiter, but also with
female gods like Juno, Diana or Venus. Standing near the image of Jupiter,
Caligula once asked the actor Apelles whether Jupiter or Caligula were
greater. When Apelles hesitated, Caligula had him cut to pieces with the
whip, praising his voice as he pled for mercy, remarking on the melodiousness
of his groans. He justified himself by saying: "Remember that I have the
power to do anything to anyone."

Caligula's behavior, a splitting of emotions
and thoughts, is nowadays diagnosed as schizophrenia. The absolute power
that Caligula enjoyed strengthened and developed the worst features of
his character. His grandmother, Antonia, and his favourite sister, Drusilla,
who could both have had a restraining influence on him, died during the
first year of his reign. In his youth - as a favourite of the soldiers
- he must have been thoroughly spoilt. The near-extinction of his family
and the subsequent fear for his own life during his adolescent years will
surely have marked his personality. However, Caligula's madness could have
been organically influenced, because it was said to have become apparent
after a serious illness which he had suffered in October 37. If this disease
was encephalitis, then it could very likely have been a contributory factor
to the bizarre features of his behaviour, for encephalitis can cause a
marked character change and give rise to impulsive, aggressive and intemperate
activity, similar in its symptoms to those of schizophrenia. In addition,
Caligula had inherited epilepsy. Some forms of epilepsy have symptoms similar
to those of both schizophrenia and the post-encephalitic syndrome. At times,
because of sudden faintness, Caligula was sometimes hardly able to move
his limbs, to stand up, to collect his thoughts or to hold up his head.
He suffered severely from sleeplessness, never sleeping for more than three
hours a night and even for that length of time he did not sleep quietly;
he was terrified by strange manifestations.

After a four year reign on January 24,
41 his insane career was brought to a close by the dagger of an assassin
named Cassius Chaerea, a tribune in the Praetorian Guard, who hated Caligula,
because he had remorselessly imitated his high, effeminate voice, and some
of the other officers whom he had wantonly insulted. His fourth wife was
stabbed to death too, while their infant daughter's head was smashed against
a wall. One of the conspirators was Cornelius Sabinus, whose wife had been
debauched and publicly humiliated by Caligula. Suetonius wrote that Caligula's
reign of terror had been so severe that the Romans refused to believe that
he was actually dead.